You Breathe Differently Down Here
by Spinifex
Summary: Hermione Granger finds herself increasingly at odds with the rest of the Order of the Phoenix as the threat of Voldemort's return becomes more imminent.
1. It's all over but the screaming

**You Breathe Differently Down Here**  
Spinifex

_1 - Everything's Over but the Screaming_

* * *

She sat in the darkness, staring unseeingly into the dying embers of the fireplace. The evening sun had long since faded, and had she been looking through the windows, she would have seen the Pleiades sparkling obscenely brightly.

She started at the hammering on her door. "Hermione! Hermione!"

Hermione sighed, mentally debating the merits of opening the door to a very angry Harry Potter. Perhaps if she ignored him for long enough, he would go away. "Hermione! I know you're in there! OPEN UP!"

A second voice joined the first. "HERMIONE! OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR _THIS INSTANT_!"

She padded to the door and unlatched it to find a very angry Ron Weasley jabbing his wand at the keyhole. "_Alohomora_ wouldn't have worked, Ron," she observed with detachment. "I've warded it."

The men pushed their way past Hermione into the shadowy room. "Rather funereal, that," muttered Harry as he set himself to lighting the wall sconces. Hermione was surprised to see that Ron's face had become so red that his freckles had entirely disappeared. He was shaking with rage.

He could not restrain himself for long. "Exactly what the hell did you think you were doing out there today?" he shouted. "We agreed. You had orders - orders! - to find out what was happening at that meeting and to WAIT. FOR. US." Flecks of foam formed at the corners of Ron's mouth. With effort, he lowered his voice. "Notice that I said WAIT. I didn't say 'show yourself.' I didn't say, 'play the hero.' I said to WAIT for us to help you."

"Ron, I..."

"Don't interrupt me! You're the patron saint of hopeless causes; do you know that? When you went charging off half-cocked, you endangered us all. If we'd gotten there half a tick later - if your aim had been the slightest bit off - you would be dead, and probably we would as well."

A somewhat calmer Harry cut in. "He's right, Hermione. And now Voldemort knows your animal form, so he'll be on his guard. We won't be able to spy on any future meetings."

"Because of you," spat Ron.

"Did you expect me to let him die?"

"Snape agreed that destroying Voldemort came first," Harry offered.

Hermione paused. "They weren't going to kill him immediately, you understand. You-know-who needed information from him, but perhaps more importantly, he needed to make Severus an example to the others."

"Snape knew the risks." There was a dreadful finality in Ron's tone.

Silence stretched between the three. Hermione broke it first. "I want to show you something." She turned away from Ron and Harry, unbuttoning her robes, and let them slide in a heavy pile to the floor. Behind her, she heard Harry's rapid intake of breath, and knew what he saw.

Myriad silvery scars criss-crossed her back and her legs. Hair-thin, they joined and diverged in a network too complicated to follow. They looped across her spine, disappearing into her hairline and underarms and following the curves of her ribs and the planes of her scapulae. On her good days, Hermione thought that it looked as if someone had wrapped her in spiderwebs; on her far more frequent bad days, she felt as if she were wearing an ill-fitting and tatterdemalion skin over her own.

Hermione turned to display the tangle of cicatrices on her chest and arms. Ron had paled and Harry looked as if he were about to be sick.

"It took the better part of an hour, I imagine. The cuts went quite deep," Hermione said conversationally. "The medi-witches who treated me after the kidnap told me that they could see my bones every time I moved."

Ron gaped. Harry whispered, "What was it?"

"Mostly _Crucio_."

"Mostly?"

"There may have been other curses, but as I was a bit indisposed at the time, I couldn't say for certain." she snapped. The men recoiled.

She ran a finger over her scarred forearm and looked directly at Ron. "This is what you expected me to ignore, Ron."

Ron opened and closed his mouth soundlessly; Hermione thought unkindly that their Glorious Leader looked rather like a fish. She bit out, "Forgive me if I couldn't sit by like a good girl, and wait for you to come to his rescue. Or not."

Ron had the grace to drop his gaze. "Right, then. You seem to have had it all in hand this time. We'll have to work out another way to infiltrate the Death Eaters. Harry and I will meet with Mum and Dumbledore tonight to discuss our options. It's likely that you won't be able to travel freely for a while." He turned on his heel and walked out.

Harry followed. As he reached the doorway, he carefully looked anywhere but at Hermione. "Hermione..." The words came in a rush. "I didn't realise... Dumbledore believes he'll pull through. They've put him in the downstairs parlour, if you'd care to see him." He pulled the door gently shut behind him.

* * *


	2. Who won the pool?

**You Breathe Differently Down Here**  
Spinifex

_2. Who Won the Pool?_

* * *

Ron Weasley's meteoric rise to power had surprised many in the wizarding community, but Hermione was not among them. She was well aware of Ron's drive for success - an visceral _need_ to prove himself that had gradually eclipsed any other desires he might have had. True, academic success had never come as easily for him as it had for Hermione, and he had never supplanted Harry as captain of the Quidditch team. With studious application he had taken quite creditable N.E.W.T.s and become the _de facto_ tactician of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but Hermione had not missed the way Ron's mouth twisted in photographs of the team after winning the Quidditch cup by an unprecendented margin of 440 points. With the exception of certain members of Slytherin house, the spectators had chanted, "Harry! Harry! Harry!" as his teammates carried him off the field on their shoulders.

Denied the opportunity to train as an Auror after leaving Hogwarts, Ron had taken a position as a clerk in the Department of Revenue Collection at the Ministry of Magic. Daily he pored over columns of nearly illegible figures before turning them over to his superiors to make final decisions. He had stopped talking about work to his friends or his family, insisting that the details which were not held in strictest confidentiality were too boring for words.

It was simply by chance that Ron had arrived late for work on the morning that an unidentified witch had burst into the foyer, firing Killing Curses in all directions before turning her wand on herself. Cornelius Fudge quickly convened a panel to investigate the matter; within a day, the Ministry issued a report that found no evidence that _Imperio_ had been involved. The witch, a recent escapee from St Mungo's psychiatric facilities, was simply mentally disturbed. The fact that the victims included Fudge's most vocal critics within the Ministry went unremarked.

Hermione had come to support Mrs Weasley as she collected her husband's personal effects from his office, so she saw the resulting commotion firsthand. With a set jaw, Ron had marched into the corridor where Fudge's new personal bodyguards kept watch over his office door. One of the sentries nodded in recognition at the late Arthur Weasley's son. Lengthening his stride, Ron reached the entryway before the astonished men could demand that he stand back. Ron slammed and sealed the Minister's door behind him. When the pair had recovered enough to pry open the door, they were confronted by a wall of solid stone. The guards tried each of the standard Demolishing Charms in turn, but the granite was impervious to the controlled explosions. Almost half an hour had passed before the wall dissolved and Fudge emerged. Sweating and pale, he hastened to assure the onlookers that everything was under control, and it had all been a misunderstanding, or possibly a practical joke. Only when the guards had pocketed their wands did Ron step out. The unsmiling practical joker strode down the hallway without a second glance at the Minister.

And the very next day Ron took his position as the chief assistant to the Minister.

Hermione was forced to admit that Ron had been good for the Ministry. He had immediately formed a task force to investigate rumours of Death Eater activity; within six months, he had uncovered two potential assassination plots and broken up three suspicious meetings. The Ministry officially played down Ron's findings, asserting that the purported assassins were simply "unstable" and "misguided" wizards who had been committed to St Mungo's secure ward for their own protection. If Hermione entertained private doubts about the fate of the wizards, she didn't broach the topic with Ron.

In the intervening years, Ron had solidified his control of the Ministry, although the shift in power was not immediately apparent to outsiders. The Wizengamot still met to try criminal cases, although as a courtesy Ron was asked to review potentially controversial verdicts before they were pronounced. Those who protested his policies too vociferously might find themselves appointed to lonely outposts by the North Sea, but that was simply politics as usual. Fudge still came forward to issue all official Ministry statements, and if he seemed visibly nervous while reading from a prepared script - well, that could be attributed to late-blooming stage fright.

The practical upshot was that, at the tender age of twenty-seven, Ronald Weasley was quite possibly the most powerful figure in the wizarding world.

* * *


End file.
